—
INTRODUCTION. HE
world, from of old to our day,
is
full
of
They
are stories of
bereavements sharper than death.
The sorrow
stories of stolen children.
of a fixed and finished calamity abates with time; the
sorrow of suspense grows intenser the longer it endures. If healing be possible, to know the worst begins the
The death of a child, as it is one of the deephuman our calamities, has connected with it some
healing. est of
of God's sweetest solaces, under that law of mercy which
tempers our
The
life
of mystery with
its
compensations.
stealing of a child involves all the sorrows of a
child's death, without the relief of those first
staunch the bleeding, and at
hopes which the wound.
last heal
" Let
me fall into the hand of the Lord," said David, "but let me not fall into the hand of man." The loss of a child by the hand of God is the child's sure gain, and may be made ours. He takes it to the infinite purity and absolute safety of His own presence and, of the dead child now, we may say with a more assured trust what was said of a dead child in the gray twilight of ;
the
dawn of
The
child that dies
Revelation, "it
is
well with the child."
we may be with
of a sad contingency vanishes as loss of a child
and
it
by the hand of man
forever; one-half
passes away.
The
involves treachery
cruelty, the despair of the family, the misery of
the child,
its
rearing in crime and (9)
shame
for ruin, or